The Lodger and Hangover Square (1944/45), the swan songs of character actor Laird Cregar, are included in Fox Horror Classics (unrated, $27). A featurette explains how the actor died young from the effects of a crash diet that are visible in Square. Here's a trio from Cregar's better days:

Take a cellphone to a high-profile movie screening, and piracy fears will get it seized. But you could take one into Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and the resulting photographic images would launch an indelible news story. Filmmaker Rory Kennedy takes an even-handed approach to her subject matter, giving a chilling human dimension to the soldiers/tormentors she interviewed.

Elizabeth Short's murder was made for the movies. It was especially gruesome, even for a city that had seen a spate of mutilation deaths in the late 1940s: The 22-year-old was cut in half, drained of her blood and sliced ear to ear.

Hollywood has made a new version of House of Wax, presumably because it figured we need one featuring Paris Hilton. Before the movie opens Friday, you can feast on its two predecessors, and a third title that will fit right in at the same movie party.

With her peek-a-boo blond hairdo and sultry looks, Veronica Lake was the "it-girl" of the 1940s silver screen. When she died penniless three decades later, her ashes sat anonymously in a funeral home for nearly three years before they were scattered off the Florida coast. Or were they?

There's an explosion of film noir titles out today so many that we'll be featuring more in Friday's DVD Watch. Here are three famous toughies I've always liked (all with babes, and two with that unmistakable trench-coat feel). Pull the trigger on: